Questions about adding second hard drive

Discussion in 'Mac Basics and Help' started by campton12, Aug 11, 2012.

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  1. campton12, Aug 11, 2012

    campton12 macrumors newbie

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    #1
    Hi all! I am new to MacBooks and I have a winter 2011 MacBook Pro 2.3GHz i5 on OS 10.8. I have a 128GB SSD as my primary and only hard drive. My plan is to get an additional hard drive to install into the optical drive bay. My question is, since my SSD is where the OS is located, after installing my secondary hard drive (since I won't need to load any OS or system files on it) will the computer automatically recognize it and make it available for use, or will I have to do something manually in order to use it for storage? Thanks in advance!
     
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  2. Stooby Mcdoobie, Aug 11, 2012

    Stooby Mcdoobie macrumors 6502a

    Stooby Mcdoobie

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    #2
    You will have to format the drive to HFS+ before you can use it for storage.
     
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  3. simsaladimbamba, Aug 11, 2012

    simsaladimbamba Guest

    simsaladimbamba

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    #3
    While the following guide is laid out for bootable drives, the same can be applied for any additional HDD you don't want to use with Windows:

    PS: I have an SSD and HDD in my MBP, the SSD is 120 GB big and the HDD is 500 GB. The HDD also has a 100 GB partition for a daily clone of the SSD, in case the SSD kicks the bucket and I am not at home, where all my other HDDs currently live.
     
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  4. campton12, Aug 11, 2012

    campton12 thread starter macrumors newbie

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    #4
    So aside from formatting, it should be no different than plugging in an external hard drive, except it will be permanently installed? I just want to make sure I don't have to configure any system settings for the computer to recognize it.
     
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  5. Stooby Mcdoobie, Aug 11, 2012

    Stooby Mcdoobie macrumors 6502a

    Stooby Mcdoobie

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    #5
    That's correct. It will always be there, unless you unmount it for some reason - even then you can remount it or just reboot and it should automatically remount itself. Just follow sim's guide to format the drive.
     
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  6. campton12, Aug 11, 2012

    campton12 thread starter macrumors newbie

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    #6
    Thanks a lot everyone for your help!
     
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